While thinking about the role of
universities in the life of the young generation of today, we cannot ignore the
kind of importance they have in their lives. Getting higher education is almost
impossible without having good universities around. The recent upsurge of
interest in the education reforms by the present government has made every mind
question about the viability of these reforms. One of the critical analysis that
we get is from Dr. Abdul Wahab, currently running Mohammad Ali Jinnah
University. Letís see what he has to say.

PAGE: Tell us a little bit about the
current progress of your university?

DR. ABDUL WAHAB (AW):
At Mohammad Ali Jinnah University we have set a target to make it a model
university. We are following three objectives and all our faculty members and
students are fully aware of these objectives. The objectives are 1) to develop
competent human resource in all respects and fields, 2) to build up the moral
values which are unfortunately not identified by any institution in Pakistan.
This aspect is totally ignored. A person might be competent but if his moral
values are not good then he might have the tendency to misuse his competence, 3)
A very serious challenge in Pakistan is the ongoing frustration among the young
people about the economy of Pakistan, the country itself and about the political
system, etc. The vast majority of people, particularly the young men, don't see
their future in Pakistan even the uneducated people leave Pakistan without any
legal documents and almost everyday we read in newspapers about deportation from
many countries and the situation has so worsened that even the Pakistanis
languishing in the jails in European countries are not willing to return to
Pakistan. So our third objective is to inculcate a burning desire in the minds
of our graduates to achieve something great in life. This we are doing by
establishing a center which we call Center of Hope and Courage. In this center
we have collected a large number of books, articles and films about the
developed countries but the material relate to the time when these countries
were backward. London, for example, was a dirty city with narrow lanes, narrow
roads, garbage, diseases and corruption. The second category of the books which
we have collected relate to the lives of those persons who have brought about
the changes in these conditions, so we want to tell our young graduates that
Pakistan is not the only country where the environment is frustrating hence do
not give up, do not think of migrating from Pakistan, do not surrender but stand
against all odds and try to bring a change. Pakistan is a land of opportunities
where many areas need good and sincere people to bring improvement.

PAGE: What is your expansion plans and
how many campuses are you running?

AW:
The problem is that the land is very expensive and the traffic is very dirty too
so those who are planning Education City do not realize that the traveling from
any locality in Karachi to that area will create serious problem. We are also
trying to secure about 25 acres in that scheme. At the moment we have one campus
comprising three buildings, each building is located on 200 square yards. We are
also planning to demolish one of these buildings and construct a six storey
building. By locating the campus inside the city in fact at the heart of the
city as MAJU we have a lot of advantage as it is easily accessible, commuting is
very easy to reach the university, particularly for the executive programs,
because if the executive programs are located outside the city then it will be
almost impossible for the working or in-service people to study or take up those
programs.

PAGE: Talking of the Education City
plan where 28 universities will be operating side by side, how effective do you
think will it be in imparting good education?

AW: I
think this project may not be functional in the next seven to ten years and
after that there will be a lot of serious problems for those who locate their
campuses in the Education City.

PAGE: But those universities do have
their campuses inside the city too...

AW:
Running two campuses is not that easy like IBA which has two campuses, one at
the university and the other in the city. Till now the university campus becomes
all empty after 2 o'clock, there are no classes after that so what I strongly
believe is that our resources are very scarce and when we invest these resources
in education they must be used for a long time. Before I became the Director of
IBA, the city campus was used only for three hours a day, gradually I introduced
executive programs and today it is used both in the morning and evening hours.

PAGE: Do you think that the private
universities will be more successful than public universities in that Education
City?

AW: I
think in the next ten to fifteen years there is no possibility of it to become
functional and even if it becomes functional it will consume a lot of time
because there will be more traffic jams and only commuting to that place will
take around three to four hours, so if you take away four working hours from the
life of a student then what is he left with. Also the long travel from various
localities from Karachi will exhaust them and they will not put their whole
effort in studies. The advantage that we have by locating in the city is that we
can assign research projects very easily and I think coming from that far off
place to do the research will be really tedious. I think they have just copied
the idea of Dubai Knowledge Village, however, the Dubai situation is totally
different, they have the infrastructure but here the condition of roads and
congestion of traffic is really worse which will continue to grow.

PAGE: As Dr. Atta-ur-Rehman is quite
optimistic in bringing out 1500 PhDs annually, how productive do you think those
PhDs will be?

AW: I
think Pakistan has suffered because no attention has been paid to the PhD level
education but to fix such a big target as of Dr. Atta ur Rehmanís, it seems
that these PhDs would not be up to the mark. PhD is a degree in which only
competent persons should take admission, secondly you shouldn't fix time for
that as some persons would take six to eight years to complete it and fixing a
quota will not be beneficial.

PAGE: How do you see the level of our
higher education in comparison with international standards of education?

AW: In
my opinion as long as we do not depoliticize the universities, as here the
universities are dominated by the teacher societies, student organizations and
employee unions and the head of the institution in most of the cases is a puppet
in the hands of these elements. They see their survival in forming an alliance
with the dominating groups. Many of the times the head of the institution form
an alliance with the student group whose political party is in power so most of
the appointments, contracts, purchases, etc will be done on the whims of those
political parties. Hence unless it is depoliticized in order to have one ruling
authority in the institution, it will not get any standard. When I was the Vice
Chancellor of the Karachi University, I told everyone of these groups that there
will be only one authority and there will be no parallel governments. I will use
my judgment and will seek advise from whichever institution I want to but I
won't let that happen that someone might call me for any undue favours.
Secondly, unless attention is paid to teaching in the classroom we will not be
able to produce quality graduates. Today the classroom teaching is ignored and
the fashionable word is research. No doubt that the objective of the university
is to teach and to do research but we don't have any research policy and most of
the money spent on the research projects are just being used for personal
purposes. We don't have any policy about where to do the basic research or where
to do an applied research. When the Japanese started their economic development
they said that they will not indulge in the basic research as it is very
expensive, time consuming and without any result but what we will do is to
obtain the research already done by the developed countries and think of new
uses of that research. Like Sony Corporation, when Western Electric Company
developed the hearing heads then Sony bought that technology for 25000 dollars
and used it for the development of transistors which was a big revolution at
that time. We on the other hand have no guidelines and most of the research here
is nothing but fraud. I may ask anyone to show me any research which has
benefited Pakistan. We want research on our problems and their solution.
Classroom teaching is ignored on this pretext of research and students are just
studying from notes and they don't read any books.

PAGE: There are many universities that
are affiliated with Western and British universities. How do you think these
affiliations are benefiting our universities?

AW:
First of all the word affiliation is not appropriate because affiliation is a
technical word and most of the foreign universities are not authorized to use
it, it is basically a collaboration. In Pakistan this collaboration is just for
the sake of attaching that name of the university, it does not mean anything.
Many of these universities have a collaboration with the third rate
universities. I am not saying that we should not benefit from the experiences of
other countries but there are other large number of areas where we can use this.
Like we get fresh prospectus of almost all the Western universities and we ask
our teachers to go through them, find out the new courses and new programs which
we can introduce to our students.

PAGE: Do you think that our graduates
need to get foreign exposure so that they can learn about the challenges of
today?

AW:
International exposure depends upon how it's being used. If it is taken with the
objective of learning and with an open mind then it will benefit, otherwise it
may depress the person. You should learn good things and return with the
confidence that you will apply them in your country.

PAGE: How satisfied are you with the
quality of graduates that you are producing and how many other universities are
doing so?

AW:
The quality of human resource produced by the universities is extremely poor for
a variety of reasons. First of all they are not exposed to real issues,
challenges and problems which Pakistan is facing, secondly the knowledge which
they acquire is accepted as it is coming from the Western countries. What we do
here like what I did in IBA is that teachers should spend time in 1) imparting
the knowledge, 2) considering application of it in Pakistan, 3) do critical
evaluation of the concepts, principles and theories. Once we improve teaching in
this way then we can also provide opportunities for applying what they learn. We
at MAJU have 52 programs in one semester to provide students opportunity to work
as a team, for showing what they have learnt. Unless we do good effort the human
resource which we produce will not be able to meet the challenges of Pakistan.

PAGE: Do you think that the faculty is
responsible for not producing quality graduates?

AW:
Faculty is not the only factor. If we give importance to merit then the students
will pay attention to studies and try to learn from it too. Pakistani society
does not take knowledge as a resource, all the progress and development depends
upon knowledge. What I suggest is that there should be orientation program for
the teachers where they could be taught as how to teach.

PAGE: What are the main measures that
could be taken to improve the quality of both the students and the teachers?

AW:
Short term training of PhDs will take three to four years hence we should start
short term training sessions of our faculty members as well as monitoring the
classroom to evaluate teachers performance in the class.

PAGE: Are you satisfied with the
performance of the MAJU faculty?

AW:
Our teachers are drawn from the same society so we have to motivate them and
educate them about how to set papers, etc.

PAGE: Is your institution also offering
PhD program?

AW: We
have a PhD program and six of our faculty members have registered in it but
their progress is very slow, which is not unusual keeping in mind the same trend
of Karachi University teachers where teachers taking full load of courses and
have registered for PhD, it will take a lot of time.

PAGE: What is your message to the
youth?

AW: My
message to the youth is that they should not be frustrated. Pakistan is a land
of opportunities. If the institutions, teachers and the environment is not
favorable to you then make your own effort because no body will have pity on you
for the reason that you don't have the good teachers or good environment, so do
your own effort to compensate for what others have done to you.